Antisemitic anti-Zionism: the root of Labour’s crisis A submission to the Labour Party inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism

Professor Alan Johnson June 2016

Antisemitic anti-Zionism: the root of Labour’s Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-peace crisis 4.4 A final word

Professor Alan Johnson is Senior Research Fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Introduction Research Centre (BICOM), founder and editor of Fathom: for a deeper understanding of Israel Everything depends on the Labour Party and the region, and a registered Labour Party understanding what it is dealing with: almost supporter (Unite). never old-fashioned Jew hatred, almost always modern antisemitic anti-Zionism – a programme to abolish Israel, a movement to boycott Israel CONTENTS and discourse to demonise Israel. To combat it, the party needs to understand the historical roots, Introduction ideological tributaries, contemporary modes and forms of expressions of antisemitic anti-Zionism. Part 1: Ideological Tributaries 1.1 Rethinking our values: assimilationism, * universalism, the Jews and the Left 1.2 Ideological Tributary: Communism and ‘anti- Antisemitism is the most protean of hatreds and Cosmopolitanism’ it has shape-shifted again (Gidley 2011). Labour 1.3 Ideological Tributary: The New Left and ‘anti- does not have a neo-Nazi problem. It does, Zionism’ however, have a problem with a modern anti- 1.4 Ideological Tributary: Islam, Islamism and Zionism of a particularly excessive, obsessive, and antisemitism demonising kind, which has co-mingled with an older set of classical antisemitic tropes, images Part 2: Modes and assumptions to create antisemitic anti- 2.1 The Programme to abolish Israel Zionism (Wistrich 1984, 1991, 2004, 2009, 2012; 2.2 The Discourse to demonise Israel Johnson 2015a, 2016). Antisemitic anti-Zionism Annexe: OK, this discourse is offensive, but is it bends the meaning of Israel and Zionism out of really antisemitic? shape until both become receptacles for those 2.3 The Movement to exclude Israelis tropes, images and ideas.

Part 3: Expressions In short, that which the demonological Jew once 3.1 Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the membership was in older forms of antisemitism, demonological 3.2 Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the leadership Israel now is in contemporary anti-Semitic anti- Zionism: uniquely malevolent, full of blood lust, Part 4: Recommendations all-controlling, the hidden hand, tricksy, always 4.1 Adopt a version of the EUMC Working acting in bad faith, the obstacle to a better, Definition of antisemitism purer, more spiritual world, uniquely deserving 4.2 A political education programme of punishment, and so on (Johnson 2015b, Hirsh 4.3 Create a new party campaign: ‘Pro’: pro- 2007, 2013b). and is structured as follows. Antisemitism’s core motif is that the Jews, collectively and in their essence, are not just Part 1 of the submission sets out three ideological Other but also malign. However, the content of tributaries of contemporary left-wing antisemitic this perceived malignity changes with the times anti-Zionism. and with the needs of the anti-Semites. ‘God- killers,’ ‘aliens,’ ‘cosmopolitans,’ ‘sub-humans’ and (a) Communist cold-war antisemitism, presented now ‘Zionists’ have all served as code words to as ‘anti-Zionism’. mark the Jew for destruction. (b) New Left ‘anti-imperialist’ thinking that depicts Israel as evil and illegitimate, and seeks the end Antisemitic anti-Zionism does not ‘criticise’ of the Jewish state. Israel—it demonises it. It is a form of antisemitism (c) an antisemitism that has its roots in parts – I dependent upon demonising constructs of stress parts – of the Muslim community. ‘Zionism’ and ‘Israel’. While classic antisemitism wanted to make the world Judenfrei, free of Jews, Part 2 sets out the three modes of contemporary antisemitic anti-Zionism wants to make the world antisemitic anti-Zionism found within parts of the Judenstaatrein, free of a Jewish state. party.

To grasp the relationship between antisemitism First, the programme to abolish Israel. and anti-Zionism today, imagine them as two circles. Some party members – very few, if any, Second, a discourse to demonise Israel. true be told – imagine that, viewed from above, one would see only one circle, because the first Third, the movement to boycott Israel. fits exactly atop the second; to them, anti-Zionism simply is antisemitism. Other party members These three modes – programme, movement, – many, many more, as the suspensions make and discourse – should be considered together, clear – see two circles that never touch and never each interacting with and reinforcing the other, could touch. For them, anti-Zionism – no matter creating an environment uniquely conducive to what claims it makes about Zionism and Israel, in the spread of antisemitic anti-Zionism on the left. whatever demonising language these claims are expressed, whatever hate-filled and obsessive Part 3 examines some of the recent expressions spirit animates them, however close is the of antisemitic anti-Zionism within the party and relationship of their ‘criticism of Israel’ to classic claims that, almost without exceptions, they antisemitic tropes, images, and ideas about involve modern antisemitic anti-Zionism not old- ‘the Jew’, and whether or not their ‘criticism’ fashioned Nazi-style Jew hatred. It also suggests also involves full-throated support for violent that the problem of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism is antisemites such as Hamas and Hezbollah – is found among some leaders of the party as well always and only just that: legitimate ‘criticism of as among parts of the membership. Israel’. Part 4 makes three recommendations to tackle The problem the party faces is that neither way antisemitic anti-Zionism within the party: the of conceptualising today’s relationship between adoption of the EUMC Working Definition of antisemitism and anti-Zionism – absolute antisemitism, a political education programme to identity or total separation – is able to properly educate the party in its spirit, and a new Labour grasp the phenomenon which has prompted this party campaign: ‘Pro’ – pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, enquiry. ‘Moving on’ is only possible for the party pro-peace. if it understands that antisemitism has moved on again: in short, the two circles now overlap in complex ways, creating a new phenomenon: antisemitic anti-Zionism. Part 1: Ideological Tributaries

This submission focuses on that phenomenon There is no wave of popular antisemitism in the UK. Rather, there are three distinct political the Jews as a people with the right to national antisemitisms; on the dwindling far right; in parts self-determination as opposed to individuals with – I stress parts – of the British Muslim community; civil rights. Much of the Left hoped to dissolve and in parts – again, I stress parts – of the Left. Jewish peoplehood in the solvent of progressive This submission is concerned almost exclusively universalism. The proletariat, understood as the with the last. universalist class par excellence, was to make a world revolution, and this would solve ‘the Jewish Left-wing antisemitism has never been the question’ once and for all, ‘in passing’ (Geras dominant strand of opinion on the Left, and it is 2013; Johnson 2015b). not so today; not by a long chalk. But it has always existed, it is growing today, and it is causing a But this left-wing universalism was always breakdown in the relationship between Jews ‘spurious’ as Norman Geras put it, because it and the Left (Steve Cohen 1984; Ben Cohen 2004; singled out the Jews as ‘special amongst other Wistrich 2012). groups’ in the sense that it obliged the Jews to ‘settle for forms of political freedom in which their identity may not be asserted collectively.’ ‘Jews,’ 1.1 Rethinking our values: assimilationism, Geras noted, ‘must be satisfied, instead, merely universalism, the Jews and the Left with the rights available to them as individuals’ (Geras 2013). The contemporary Left needs to rethink its relationship to a couple of its own values – Of course, in the 19th century and the early assimilation and universalism. It needs to 20th century, many European Jews were keen understand better how it has misused those supporters of both universalism and assimilation; values in its understanding of Israel and the Jews, it was the name of their desire too. But world allowing them to prevent a serious engagement history went another way and Jewish history with the history of the 20th century, and, as a went with it. This is the way that history went: result, those values have badly misshapen its the degeneration of the Russian Revolution into relationship to Zionism as a project and Israel Stalinism and antisemitism, the failure of the as a state. European socialist revolution, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, the unprecedented transformation There has always been a distinct tradition of of the assault upon the Jews in the form of the left-wing antisemitism. As a Labour student, the Shoah, an industrial-scale genocide in the author worked with the Union of Jewish Students heart of Europe, the expulsion of the Jews from in the mid 1980s against the far-left campaign to the Arab lands. All this left the appeal to Jews ban Jewish Societies from UK university campuses of assimilationism and universalism in tatters on the grounds that they were ‘Zionist’. Left-wing (Deutscher 1958). antisemitism got going during the foundations of the socialist movement in the late 19th century as In response, Jews insisted on defining their parts of the left, often as a tactical ploy, identified own mode of participation in modernity and ‘The Jew’ with finance capitalism. August Bebel, in universal emancipation: support for Zionism the German Social Democrat leader, shook his and a homeland for the Jews; the creation of head at all this and called it the ‘socialism of Israel, a nation-state in a world of nation-states. fools’ (Steve Cohen 1984, Wistrich 2012). Whether they moved to Israel or not, that was the choice of all but a sliver – albeit a very vocal In the late 19th century, most of the Left felt that sliver, often prominent in western intellectual and assimilation was the only acceptable Jewish academic life – of world Jewry. And that remains response to rising antisemitism. For example, the case today. Lenin – setting up the ‘Good Jew / Bad Jew’ dichotomy that has been dear to parts of the Left However, and crucially, parts of the Left – by no ever since – wrote that ‘the best Jews have never means all – failed to adapt to this great rupture clamoured against assimilation.’ Many on the in world and Jewish history. This failure is all- Left disapproved of the survival of Jewishness – of important, for it utterly transformed the political meaning of ‘anti-Zionism’. Anti-Zionism meant took root in parts of the global left: Zionism one thing in the early 20th century: an argument equals racism; Zionism equals imperialism; among Jews, mostly, about how best to meet the Zionism equals South African apartheid; Israel is threat of antisemitism. Anti-Zionism has come the USA’s ‘watchdog’ in the Middle East; Zionism to mean something entirely different after the is complicit with, or even promotes, antisemitism, Holocaust and after the creation of the State of Zionism is a form of Nazism, Israel is a Nazi-like Israel in 1948: it has come to mean a programme state. All of these notions are central to antisemitic of comprehensive hostility to all but a sliver of anti-Zionism today. world Jewry, a programme for the eradication of actually existing Jewish self-determination (Hirsh Communist-led ‘anti-Zionist’ campaigns began 2007). in earnest in the late 1940s. ‘Zionists’ i.e. Jewish communists in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East After the Holocaust and the establishment of Berlin were tried, expelled, and in some cases the State of Israel, the ‘socialism of fools’ did executed (Herf 2016). These ‘anti-Cosmopolitan not disappear. Rather, it morphed into the purges’ almost culminated in a crime against ‘anti-imperialism of idiots’ in the second half humanity in the form of Stalin’s 1953 plan to of the 20th century, when vicious, well-funded deport the surviving Jews of the Soviet Union and long-running anti-Zionist campaigns were and Eastern Europe, an enormity which was to conducted by the Stalinist states in alliance with begin with an antisemitic show-trial of five Jewish authoritarian Arab states (see 1.2). While the New doctors on fake charges of poisoning – the so- Left challenged Stalinism about many things, it called ‘Doctor’s Plot.’ Fortunately, Stalin died first mostly adopted Soviet ‘anti-Zionism’ as its own, and his successors dropped the plan (Fishman mostly uncritically, especially in the UK (see 1.3). 2004, Herf 2016). Thus was the soil prepared for the growth of the antisemitic anti-Zionism the party must now The 1967 Six Day War gave the Communist ‘anti- challenge (Wistrich 2012). Zionist’ campaign a huge boost. Crooke (1988) has noted that this campaign ‘increased in the 1970s, as Israel inflicted another defeat on Arab 1.2 Ideological Tributary: Communist ‘anti- states in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and Jewish cosmopolitanism’ and anti-Zionism’ organisations internationally stepped up their campaign for Soviet Jewry.’ Crooke continues: Moshe Postone has pointed out that when ‘The core of the Stalinist argument was their old Stalinism spread over large parts of the globe technique of “the amalgam”. Zionism, so the after World War Two, ‘another strand of left Stalinists claimed, was tied up with, allied to, anti-Zionism – this time deeply antisemitic – was linked with, or responsible for, every reactionary introduced by the Soviet Union’ in the form of force that right-minded people might detest – a global ‘anti-Zionist’ propaganda campaign capitalism, imperialism, even antisemitism and (2010; see also Fishman 2004; Crooke 2001, Julius Nazism.’ 2010). It would be a mistake to imagine that this is all One statistic from Anthony Julius’s book Trials just old history. of the Diaspora (2010) gives us a sense of the scale of this Stalinist campaign: 230 books were First, the amalgam technique is still operative, published in the USSR alone from 1969-1985 albeit dressed up in the new language of about a supposed Zionist-Masonic conspiracy ‘intersectionality’. against Russia, with a combined print run of 9.4 million. Second, as François Furet has reminded us, while the ‘illusion’ of Communism may have passed, ‘it The huge impact on the Left of this decades-long wasn’t that long ago’. Point: some people formed campaign has been underestimated. In the view in that milieu are now very influential in the of Stan Crooke, author of The Stalinist Roots of Labour party and its affiliated trades unions at ‘left’ Anti-Zionism (2001), this flood of Communist the very highest levels. Seumas Milne, the current propaganda ensured that the following ideas Head of Strategy and Communications of the Labour Party, does not support Israel’s right to Israel was thus reframed not as a nation-state exist, claims its founding was ‘a crime’, supports among others, to be criticized as others, but as ‘a Hamas as a ‘resistance’ movement (see Milne key site of the imperialist system’. In this new world 2016). He wrote in 2014 that ‘Hamas has shown view, the Left’s duty was to take sides in a Great it can hit back across Israel’, adding ‘Israel does Contest, and sign up on the side of the ‘Oppressed not have a right to self-defence’ against Hamas Countries’ against the ‘Oppressor Countries’, on rockets fired on Israel (Milne, 2014). the side of ‘the Resistance’ against ‘Imperialism’, or in today’s language of poststructuralism and Third, parts of the New Left inherited, rather than postmodernism, on the side of ‘The Multitude’ critiqued, the antisemitic anti-Zionist aspect of against ‘The Empire’. The Israel-Palestine conflict the Stalinist inheritance (Julius 2010, Hirsh 2007, was no longer a complex unresolved national Wistrich 2012, Johnson 2015b). question to which democrats should respond with support for the peacemakers on both sides and work for ‘two states for two peoples’. Instead, 1.3. Ideological Tributary: The New Left and parts of the left now supported Israel’s enemies – ‘anti-Zionism’ whatever these enemies stood for, however they behaved – as a left-wing ‘anti-imperialist’ duty Listen to the words of the leading socialist (see Berman 2005). feminist academic Judith Butler: ‘Understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are This shift meant a number of things on parts of progressive, that are on the left, that are part of the left. a global left, is extremely important’ (quoted in Johnson 2012) And listen to the words, recorded First, the antisemitic anti-Zionism spread by the on You Tube, of the Labour Party leader Jeremy Stalinist movement was retained and translated Corbyn: ‘[Hezbollah is] an organisation that into the new ‘anti-imperialist’ language of the is bringing about long term peace and social New Left, rather than rejected root and branch. justice and political justice in the whole region’ (see Hirsh 2016). What happened to make some Second, the very meaning of ‘Zionism’ began, parts of the Left – even leading public intellectuals slowly but surely, to take on the old shapes that and social democratic party leaders – lose the had been reserved for ‘the Jew’ in anti-Semitic ability to distinguish the antisemitic and the discourse. fascistic from the progressive? What have been the consequences of this for the relationship Third, if you were an enemy of Israel, even an between the Left and the Jews? openly and proudly antisemitic one, you were redefined as ‘part of a global left’ and an agent The short answer is that a paradigm shift has taken of ‘social justice’. Parts of the Left infantalised place on large parts of the left with disastrous the Palestinians as noble savages, denied their consequences for that relationship. David Hirsh agency, put them beyond criticism, and coded (2007) observed that whereas before the late revanchist Arab nationalism – and sometimes 1960s anti-imperialism was ‘one value amongst even antisemitic Islamism – as singularly a whole set – democracy, equality, sexual and progressive (Johnson 2012). This political gender liberation, anti-totalitarianism’ – it was recoding put a plus sign where once there was a raised to a radically new status after the political negative and so created a bridge between the rupture that was ‘the Sixties’: anti-imperialism far-left and the Islamists, across which traffic has became ‘the central value, prior to and above latterly been heavy, especially since 9/11 and the all others.’ Parts of the left abandoned universal subsequent 9/11 wars. progressive values rooted in the Enlightenment and became apologists for authoritarian and reactionary political forces. ‘Victory to the 1.4: Ideological Tributary: Islam, Islamism and Resistance!’ meant the Left apologised for, or antisemitism refused to criticise, any and all ‘resistance’ to the West. The third ideological tributary of contemporary antisemitic anti-Zionism – elements of Islamic and Islamist thought – is not of the left but it has Cartoon A. Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustur come to be influentialon parts of the Left. (October 19, 2003) depicts the railroad to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau – but with The party must proceed exceptionally carefully Israeli flags replacing the Nazi ones. here. On the one hand, to treat all Muslims as antisemitic would be ridiculous: wholly wrong, B. and itself cause for disciplinary action. On the other hand, there is a sense in which the party must start to ‘get real’ about the problem it faces. It is a fact that, today, one major source of antisemitic anti-Zionism – as many of the recent individual party suspensions should have made clear – is an antisemitic discourse that circulates in parts of the Muslim world, has been brought to the UK along with post-war immigration and is influential insome parts of some Muslim communities in the UK (see Rich 2015.)

This claim should be uncontentious. According to Cartoon B. Arab News, a Saudi-based English leading UK Muslim political commentator Mehdi language daily (April 10, 2002), shows Ariel Hasan, a bitter critic of Israel, ‘antisemitism isn’t Sharon wielding a swastika-shaped axe to chop just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim up Palestinian children. community; it’s routine and commonplace.’ Hasan went on: ‘It’s our dirty little secret. You Anthony Julius has examined the ‘distinctively could call it the banality of Muslim antisemitism’ English versions of contemporary European (2013). Muslim anti-Zionism’ in his seminal study of English antisemitism Trials of the Diaspora The UK Muslim community consumes media (2010). He catalogued the conspiracy theories from the wider Muslim world, including the about the Jewish control of the media and Middle East, and we must be willing to register the theme of a ‘Jewish/Israel lobby’ controlling the utterly routine character of antisemitic anti- politics in nefarious ways. Antisemitic material Zionism on some of those platforms: sermons, circulates in Mosques and Islamic bookshops, websites, official media, social media, and while Holocaust denial, or hostility to Holocaust cartoons like those reproduced below. To cite Memorial Day as a ploy to defend Israel, is also just one example, an ADL study of the depiction present in parts of the UK Muslim community, in cartoons published in the Arab and Muslim propagated by some Islamist groups and at one world of the last four Israeli prime ministers – time by the Muslim Council of Britain itself. Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu – showed the systematic The ‘banality of Muslim antisemitism’ pointed to use of Holocaust Inversion there, i.e. the portrayal by Mehdi Hasan, has its roots in several sources. of Israelis as Nazis (ADL 2010). First, canonical antisemitism found in the Koran A. and Hadith (Bostom /Johnson 2008).

Second, cultural antisemitism brought over with immigration and mostly unchallenged due to failures of integration (Malik 2009).

Third, a modern, political, and ideological Islamist antisemitic anti-Zionism, typified perhaps by Islamist Sayyad Qutb’s 1950 book Our Struggle against the Jews which blames Jews for almost everything from ‘atheistic materialism’ to timeless essence of evil than a historical set of ‘animalistic sexuality’, from ‘the destruction of the changing and variegated beliefs and practices’ family’ to an incessant war against Islam itself (2007). (see Berman 2002; Hasan 2013). In the imaginary of antisemitic anti-Zionism, * Israel’s very existence is viewed as a crime The point in asking the enquiry to consider against humanity: an illegitimate nation inspired these lengthy accounts of the three ideological by nothing but racism, born in sin through an tributaries of antisemitic anti-Zionism is to ‘ethnic cleansing’; and now an ‘Apartheid demonstrate that the party does not face a state’ pursuing ‘genocidal’ policies. ‘The most passing problem caused by an influx of some dangerous country in the world!’ says Ilan Pappe odd former far-leftists as a result of Jeremy – the influential Israeli academic, now teaching Corbyn’s victory. (In fact, as I make clear in part 4, in the UK. ‘A Lunatic Nation!’ that deserves what many of the suspended members are councillors, Germany and Japan got in 1945, says Norman Mayors or former Mayors, and there is even an Finkelstein. And so on. MP.) The point is: these rivers run deep. In other words, antisemitic anti-Zionism is the product The political programme of the left for every of some long standing and important, though other oppressed people in history – the right not dominant, political movements, ideological to national self-determination – is denied traditions and cultural trends on the UK left. to just one group, the Jews, who are told to embrace post-national universalism; and not The next section of the submission explores the in some socialist future, but now (Cohen 1984). three modes through which antisemitic anti- ‘Nationhood is not a right ... self-determination is Zionism is seeking to reshape the party’s culture a myth’ argues the anti-Zionist writer Jacqueline and policy today. Rose (2007). Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement, rejects any expression of Jewish self-determination because ‘by definition it Part 2: Modes infringes the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinians to part of their homeland.’ (2012) Antisemitic anti-Zionism has three interlinked Another leading anti-Zionist and proponent of modes: a programme to abolish Israel (and only the abolition of Israel, Ali Abunimeh of Electronic Israel), a discourse to demonise Israel (and only Intifada, writes that ‘self-determination… cannot Israel) and a movement to exclude Israel (and apply to Israelis’ (2012). only Israel) from the economic, cultural sporting and educational life of humanity. None is mere The idea of conquest lies just beneath the surface ‘criticism of Israel’. Each must be decisively of the antisemitic anti-Zionist programme, rejected by the party. especially for the hard-core ideologues. Coercion will be necessary, argues Shenhav, because Israel is a ‘pseudo-democracy’ in which 2.1 The Programme to abolish Israel all critical thought has been ‘paralysed.’ (2012) Saree Makdisi, an English professor at UCLA, and Antisemitic anti-Zionism has a programme: the a BDS leader, is blunter still. ‘No privileged group destruction of the existing Jewish nation-state in in the history of the world has ever voluntarily Israel. While classic antisemitism wanted to make renounced its privileges,’ he says, so ‘the Israelis the world Judenfrei, free of Jews, antisemitic anti- will never relinquish their privileges until they are Zionism wants to make the world Judenstaatrein, compelled, preferably by non-violent means… to free of a Jewish state. accept the parameters of a single democratic state’ (2012) It tends to view Jewish nationalism, as David Hirsh has pointed out, as ‘essentially different That weasel word ‘preferably’ is a political and from all other nationalisms … nothing at all but moral opiate taken to evade the real-world a mode of exclusion … more like a totalising and logic of the programme. The leading anti-Zionist writer Norman Finkelstein has criticised the BDS • as guilty of the wanton and gratuitous movement for exactly this evasion. Talking about shedding of the blood of non-Jewish children, the BDS movement’s programme, Finkelstein as ‘the Jew’ was held to do in the classic said ‘I loathe the disingenuousness — they don’t blood libel slander; want Israel [to exist].’ He went on: • as the obstacle to a better, purer, peaceful [The BDS movement] can’t answer the and spiritual world, as ‘the Jew’ was in Israelis when they say BDS seeks to eliminate classical antisemitism; Israel because it’s true! It’s not an accident that BDS does not mention Israel. You know • as inherently racist, violent and supremacist, that and I know that. I’m sick of it. Are you as Judaism was depicted as being in classic going to reach the Israeli public with a antisemitism; message of ‘they want to destroy us’? No. And you know what? You shouldn’t. At least • and as the equivalent of the Nazi state. be honest – say ‘we want to destroy Israel and this is our strategy for doing it. But this Also forming an important part of the antisemitic duplicity and this disingenuousness! ‘Oh, we anti-Zionist discourse is antisemitism denial and are agnostic about Israel’ [you say]… you victim-reversal: i.e. the idea that whoever claims are not agnostic! You don’t want it! Just say to see ‘antisemitism’, and speaks up about it, is it! You don’t because you know that if you guilty – unless they are talking about a Nazi or do, you don’t have a prayer of reaching a neo-Nazi – of (a) deliberately ‘playing’ a ‘card’ broad public (2012). in bad faith to ‘prevent criticism of Israel’, or (b) committing an act of ‘Islamophobia’ if the I turn now to the antisemitic anti-Zionist antisemitic anti-Zionism which is the subject of discourse which, by demonising Israel, justifies their criticism also happens to have emanated the programme of the abolition of Israel. from a Muslim, such as Yusef Quaradawi or the new NUS President. A short-hand term for 2.2: The discourse to demonise Israel this form of denial and victim reversal is ‘The Livingstone Formulation’ (Hirsh 2016), which Hirsh The abolitionist programme of antisemitic defines as ‘a rhetorical device which enables anti-Zionism is justified by a demonising the user to refuse to engage with the charge discourse that bends the meaning of ‘Israel’ made. It is a mirror which bounces back onto an and ‘Zionism’ out of shape until both become accuser a counter-charge of dishonest Jewish (or receptacles for those tropes, images and ideas ‘Zionist’) conspiracy.’ of classical antisemitism. In short, that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Hirsh identifies two defining features of ‘The Israel now is: uniquely malevolent, full of blood Livingstone Formulation’. lust, all-controlling, the hidden hand, tricksy, always acting in bad faith, the obstacle to a Firstly, the Livingstone Formulation conflates better, purer, more spiritual world, uniquely anything allegedly antisemitic, in this case deserving of punishment, and so on (Hirsh 2007, repeatedly insulting a Jewish reporter by Wistrich 2012, Johnson 2015a, Johnson 2015b). comparing him to a Nazi, into the category The following ways of talking about Israel are of legitimate criticism of Israel. common on parts of the left today. Secondly, it goes further than accusing • depicting Israel as being all-powerful and at people who raise the issue of antisemitism the heart of an all-controlling conspiracy, as of being wrong; it accuses them of being ‘the Jew’ was in classical antisemitism; wrong on purpose; of crying wolf, of playing the antisemitism card. It alleges • depicting support for Israel as the site of a an intent, often a collective intent and so a dubious dual loyalty, a shadow under which conspiracy, to mobilize Jewish victim-power ‘the Jew’ was cast in classical antisemitism; for illegitimate purposes. Those lucky enough not to have been obliged to Shenhav’s Beyond the Two-State Solution, to study the demonising discourse of antisemitic Israel is ‘an aggressive war machine’, pregnant anti-Zionism often understandably fail to with genocide; Israel’s ‘violence-generating appreciate the sheer extravagance and wanton mechanisms’ drive it into killing Arabs regularly,’ excess of it. In brief: and Israel is on course to achieve ‘the annihilation of the Palestinian people’ (Shenhav 2012). The ‘Zionism’ is reduced by antisemitic anti-Zionism introduction to Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe’s to an ideology and movement of ‘racial 2015 book On Palestine – prominently displayed superiority and supremacy’ with a relation of for months in our high street bookstores – claims ‘inherent contradiction’ to democracy and that in 2014 Israel was engaged not in targeted liberalism, and which is, anyway, based on a strikes to restore deterrence against incessant calculated fabrication of peoplehood (Pappe Hamas rocket fire on Israeli civilians, but rather 2014) This conception of Zionism homogenizes, in the ‘systematic carpet bombing of an entire essentialises and – to invent a word – monsters it. population’. And, of course, the Nazi analogy is now used frequently (see below). Judith Butler, for example, reduces Zionism to nothing but ‘a violent project of settler I now examine some prominent tropes of this colonialism,’ while Yitzhak Laor attacks the antisemitic anti-Zionist discourse. In each case ‘fundamentally intolerant nature’ of a movement we can see that older antisemitic tropes are that ‘has no source of legitimization except the being updated, without consciously or not, in old colonial discourse’ (2009). For Jacqueline the new assault on Zionism and Israel. Later, in Rose, Jewish nationalism is racism, separatism, part 4 we will see that almost every suspension and exclusivism (2007). The Nobel laureate from the party is a case of a party member being Jose Saramago tells us that ‘the great majority’ influenced by these tropes, not by old-fashioned of Israeli Jews exhibit ‘a contempt and an Nazi antisemitism. intolerance which, on a practical level, have led to the extreme of denying any humanity to the Palestinian people, at times denying their basic Discourse: from the conspiratorial all-controlling right to existence’ (foreword to Laor 2009). Zionism Jew to conspiratorial all-controlling Israel is understood by Pappe as a genocidal ideology and movement which ‘expelled, massacred, ‘Antisemitism,’ Steve Cohen observed, ‘provides destroyed, and raped’ in 1948, conducting its adherents with a universal and generalised an ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinians. And interpretation of the world’: the theory of the which could do no other: ‘Zionist ideology’ is an Jewish conspiracy. This theory ‘depicts Jews as ‘ethnic ideology’ that seeks a ‘total cleansing’ historically controlling and determining … human of non-Jews from the land to make possible the destiny.’ Jews are framed as conspiring to run complete ‘Judaisation of Palestine’ (2010). Israel, the world, start wars, and exploit the non-Jew to Pappe claims, is ‘preparing an ethnic cleansing further Jewish tribal interests (1984). in the West Bank and a genocide in Gaza,’ only leaving the Strip in 2005 so it could ‘bomb freely.’ Today’s antisemitic anti-Zionism ‘works’ like this: And so on. once, the discourse was once all about the ‘devilish Jew’ who was, for example, both arch- Unhinged portrayals of ‘Israel’ as a kind of capitalist and arch-Bolshevik – a Jewish division monster are common. For example, Yitzhak of labour to trick the gentiles – with the world in Laor claims that IDF ‘death squads’ are guilty its grips. Today, the discourse is all about ‘Israel’ of ‘indiscriminately killing,’ and of acts of depicted as doing what the devilish Jew used ‘sadism,’ including ‘mass starvation.’ (2009) to do: ‘standing in the way of world peace … Omar Barghouti claims Israel has an ‘insatiable responsible for stirring up wars … uniquely racist appetite’ for ‘genocide and the intensification of or apartheid or dangerous in some other way’ ethnic cleansing.’ (2012) (One is reminded here of (Hirsh 2007). those inter-war cartoons of gigantic Jews looming over and eating up the gentile world.) According John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s 2007 book The Israel Lobby – whether intentionally enquiry into the monstrous Big Lie that the or not – gave a stamp of academic legitimacy rescue mission sent by Israel to Haiti had a secret to this kind of conspiracism (Mead 2007). By agenda of harvesting the organs of the dead for alleging that only the power of the Israel lobby transportation back to Jews in Israel. to shape US foreign policy could explain the US decision to invade Iraq, they gave new life to the The blood libel / baby killers trope was present old idea that a dangerous but hidden Jewish at, sometimes central to, the protests during the power pushes states into wars and revolutions. 2014 Gaza conflict as in this photograph of a Their thesis has certainly normalised conspiracy protest outside the BBC: talk, from Baroness Tonge saying ‘The Jewish lobby has got its grips on the Western world, its financial grips’ to Ilan Pappe who claims that US Middle East policy in the region is ‘confined to the narrow route effectively delineated ... by AIPAC’ (Pappe, in Chomsky and Pappe 2010).

Such conspiracy talk is inseperable from the dual loyalty smear. In 2011 Labour MP Paul Flynn alleged that Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel had divided loyalties because he had ‘proclaimed himself to be a Zionist’. Flynn added that ambassadors to Israel had hitherto not been Jewish precisely ‘to avoid the accusation The blood libel is a theme found in much anti- that they have gone native’. Britain needed, he Israeli discourse in the Arab and Muslim world, said, ‘someone with roots in the UK [who] can’t which, of course, has influence in the UK. For be accused of having Jewish loyalty’ (see Bright example, in 2007 extremist Islamist Sheik Raed 2011). He was subsequently made to apologise Saleh, an antisemite and a leader of the by Ed Miliband, the then party leader. Northern Islamic Movement, gave a speech in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Wadi Joz The dual loyalty canard is also found in some that peddled the medieval blood libel, saying highly influential academic writing that shapes ‘We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the wider left-wing culture in the UK. ‘In the United dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the States today,’ Ilan Pappe argued, in a book holy month of Ramadan with children’s blood. widely available in high-street book shops in the Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, UK, ‘one cannot ignore the level of integration let him ask what used to happen to some children of Jews into the heights of American financial, in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the cultural and academic power’ nor their dough of the holy bread’ (see Johnson 2015c). ‘exploitation of the fruits of successful integration into American society for the benefit of a foreign And why does Raed Saleh matter to this enquiry? country’ (Pappe in Chomsky and Pappe 2010). Because the degree to which the party does Pappe doesn’t quite call American Jews a fifth not currently ‘get’ antisemitic anti-Zionism was column, but he is getting there. shown by the warm reception given to Salah by Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader. Corbyn organised a press conference to defend Salah’s Discourse: from the blood libel aimed at ‘the presence in the UK and said of him: ‘He is far Jew’ to ‘criticism’ of the Jewish state as blood- from a dangerous man. He is a very honoured thirsty child-killer citizen, he represents his people extremely well, and his is a voice that must be heard.’ Corbyn The classic blood libel held that Jews murdered even added this personal message to Salah: ‘I gentile children for pleasure or in their religious look forward to giving you tea on the terrace [of rituals – to bake their Matzo bread. Today we the House of Commons] because you deserve it!’ have a peer of the realm who demands an Saleh – as many pointed out to Jeremy Corbyn neocons’ (or the ‘Jewish lobby’) started the Iraq at the time – opposed not the occupation but war (or confected a crisis in the UK Labour Party) the ‘bacteria of all times’. He did not criticise for Jewish purposes. ‘Criticism of Israel’ this is Benjamin Netanyahu, but the demonic ‘unique not: it is the demonization of the Jewish State in mover’ who was behind 9/11. He did not call for terms eerily reminiscent of those once reserved the West to apply diplomatic pressure on Israel by antisemites for ‘the Jew’ (Gardner, 2007). but attacked the entire West as a ‘slave to Global Zionism’. These statements were all one click Discourse: from ‘Judaism is violent and away on the internet and the leader was pointed supremacist’ to ‘Israel is the violent and to them. He ignored them all and instead issued supremacist expression and embodiment of fulsome praise for Saleh. About Saleh’s blood Judaism’ libel speech, the UK Appeal Court decided that ‘We do not find this comment [by Salah] could In classical antisemitism, Judaism is framed as be taken to be anything other than a reference a violent, supremacist pseudo-religion; a tribal to the blood libel against Jews.’ It also decided affair masked as something more elevated to that this would ‘offend and distress Israeli Jews fool the gentiles. Today, the discourse depicts and the wider Jewish community’ (Johnson 2015). a ‘racist’ ‘imperialist’ ‘genocidal’ Israel as the inevitable result of, and the natural expression of a fundamentally malevolent Jewish religion, Discourse: The Jew as obstacle to a new and or, perhaps even worse, the natural expression better and more spiritual world of a fundamentally malevolent essential ‘Jewish being and thinking’, of which Judaism itself is In classic antisemitism, a peaceful utopia is only an outcrop. depicted as being just out of reach, graspable if only ‘the Jew’ would get out of the way. Now it Today, the old notion of Judaism as violent and is Israel which is to get out of the way, or to be supremacist is being given a new lease of life pushed. by parts of the Left. Israel Shahak was lauded recently by no less an authority than Perry • Form 1 (Christian): Jews as the betrayers and Anderson in the New Left Review, sometimes killers of the universal God. called ‘the flagship journal of the western left’ • Form 2 (Enlightenment): Jews as a particularist (Anderson 2015). Some of Shahak’s words have anachronism, standing in the way of been quoted approvingly by the influential anti- universalist reason. Zionist writer Jacqueline Rose. These words: ‘the • Form 3 (Anti-Enlightenment): Jews as rootless real issue [is] the racist character of the Zionist cosmopolitans, the dissolvent of every nation Movement and the State of Israel and the and people. roots of that racism in the Jewish religious law • Form 4: (Nazi): Jews as untermenschen, the [Halakha]’ (quoted in Rose 2007). biological pollutant in the otherwise healthy social body of the volksgemeinshaft. Oren Ben-Dor, a university lecturer and the co- organiser of an academic conference about Today, the homeland of the Jewish people, Israel as an illegal state that was to be held Israel itself, has been handed the role of ‘Jewish at Southampton University in 2016 (and is now obstacle to utopia’. It is not treated in anti-Semitic scheduled for Cork in 2017), has given this kind of anti-Zionist discourse as a nation-state to be thing a Heideggerian twist, as Sarah Browne has criticised like others but as the very fulcrum of all revealed in a critique (2015). Ben-Dor claimed that is wrong with our world, to be cleared away that ‘The Zionist victim and supremacist mentality as the necessary preliminary to local, regional, – that living force and unity which is nourished by indeed world peace. Antisemitic anti-Zionist the desire to be hated, stems, before all else, from discourse suggests darkly the need for ‘A World sublimated hatred of, and supremacy towards, Beyond Zionism’ or it says that ‘Zionism is our all “others”’. He goes on to argue that ‘the misfortune’ or that ‘The key to world peace is the Holocaust occurred because of something that destruction of Israel’ or it argues that the ‘Jewish haunts Jewish being and thinking, something that cannot be tamed’ (see Browne 2015). Discourse: The Nazi Analogy

Ben-Dor is not a one-off in academia. Consider An accurate understanding of the Nazi also the leading European philosopher Gianni Holocaust is essential to grasp modern Vattimo’s astonishing editorial introduction to Israeli savagery towards the Palestinian Deconstructing Zionism, a collection of essays people (Mike Napier, Chair of the Scottish written, note, by ‘some of today’s leading Palestine Solidarity Campaign, quoted in philosophers.’ He writes: ‘When I continue to Gerstenfeld 2009). recite, in the Latin breviary, certain Psalms like the 12th, (Cum reduceret Dominus captives Sion This is what I have to live with every time ...) I increasingly feel its literal more than its Israel does something bad. Out come the allegorical sense: this is ... a song of jubilation for swastikas, out come the pictures of Hitler, and the military victory of one people over another.’ the photos, omg, photos of graphic images of dead Jews set side by side with images Vattimo presents the collection of essays as of whatever havoc Israel has wreaked this digging up the roots of a violent tribal Jewish time. It’s a deliberate, systematic attempt to essence and he is personally disgusted by what make people relive an experience that left he finds: ‘the feeling of a nomadic people with millions of Jews dead and a wound on the whom I have nothing in common.’ He goes on, collective Jewish memory that hasn’t even ‘To speak of Israel as an “irredeemable sin” is begun to heal. … Hurting an entire group therefore not so excessive.’ And he objects to the of people because you’re so incandescently Holocaust being used as ‘a type of Nuremburg angry at a particular set of them is indirect trial before which all thinkers are brought in discrimination. In short, comparing Jews, order to be judged.’ any Jews, to the Nazis is antisemitic and it’s wrong. Please stop. (Sarah McCulloch, a As for those ‘Nazi hunters who never seem to British Jew, blogging in anguish on 20 July get enough of justice-vengeance’ – he has had 2014). enough of them, too. Vattimo suggests we listen less to ‘the Zionists’ and more to the former One of the most dangerous developments Iranian President Ahmadinejad who has had the in antisemtic anti-Zionism in recent times has courage to ‘question the very legitimacy of Israel’s been the spread of the Nazi Analogy or what existence.’ Passing in silence over Ahmadinejad’s is increasingly called ‘Holocaust Inversion’ threats to erase Israel from the page of time (Gerstenfeld 2007; Rich 2009). As this has been and his Holocaust denial, Vattimo praises the present in several of the communications of former Iranian leader in terms that should give suspended party members it is treated at some us pause: ‘When Ahmadinejad invokes the end length here. of the State of Israel, he merely expresses a demand that should be more explicitly shared by Holocaust Inversion takes four forms. First, the the democratic countries that instead consider depiction of Israelis as the new Nazis and the him an enemy’ (Vattimo 2014). Palestinians as the new Jews; an inversion of reality. Second, Zionism is made to appear as The point, for this enquiry, is that Vattimo is akin to Nazism, or to be considered alongside no fringe figure. Deconstructing Zionism is of, or in comparison to, or even collaborating stuffed full of the cream of left-wing intellectual with Nazism. Third, the Holocaust is turned life, from Judith Butler to Slavoj Zizek, and is into a ‘moral lesson’ for, or a ‘moral indictment’ read I universities. And yet, parts of the book of the Jews – an inversion of morality. Fourth, are engaged in not only the intellectual Holocaust memory appears only as a politicised delegitimization of the state of Israel but a kind and manipulated thing, a ‘card’ that is ‘played’, of incitement against Jews (see Brahm’s 2014 a club that is wielded instrumentally, with malice critical review). aforethought, by bullying Jews, for Jewish ends (Klaff 2013, 2014). The depiction of Zionism as a kind-of-Nazism D. was ‘the major trope in the 1960s and 1970s Soviet antisemitism’, according to Anthony Julius (2010). By the 1980s, wrote the late scholar of antisemitism Robert Wistrich, ‘the Soviet Union … stood in the forefront of the global campaign to equate Zionism with Nazism’ (1984). Wistrich also demonstrated in some detail how the ‘willingness of supposedly anti-Soviet radical leftists to swallow these made-in-Russia fabrications’ ensured that a demonising anti-Zionism became ‘an integral part of the cultural code of many Leftist and some liberal circles’ in the West (1984; see also Cohen 1984). Image D. Socialist Review, 7, 5 July-14 September This trend was ‘most striking in Great Britain’, (1982). Wistrich believed, the far-left leading the way in ‘reflecting motifs long familiar from Soviet Today, it is no longer unusual to find, in the propaganda’ (Wistrich 1984) and in taking those European public square, especially if that square motifs into UK civil society in the most determined has been occupied by the Left, Israel’s Prime and organised fashion. The Inversion has now Minister Benjamin Netanyahu portrayed as a been in use for over three decades in far-left modern-day Hitler, or the Israeli Defence Forces circles in the UK, as demonstrated by these as the modern-day SS, especially at times of cartoons depicting Israeli Prime Minister Begin conflict in Israel-Palestine. One routinely hears as a Nazi, published in 1982 in the hard-left Israel’s anti-terror operation in Jenin in 2002 – Labour Herald newspaper, co-edited at the time in which 52 Palestinians were killed, around half by Ken Livingstone, and in the Socialist Workers being combatants, as well as 23 Israeli soldiers – Party’s monthly magazine The Socialist Review described as being ‘just like the Warsaw Ghetto’ (see Cohen 1984; Wistrich 2012; Cohen 2004; (in which approximately 300,000 Jews were Gerstenfeld 2007a and 2007b). murdered during the Holocaust.

The use of Inversion discourse is no longer a fringe activity in Europe. In 2009, the European Institute C. for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism noted the ‘growing normalisation’ in the UK of ‘the use of Nazi or related terms or symbols (Nazism, Hitler, Swastikas, etc.) in reference to Jews, Israel, Zionism’ (Iganski and Sweiry 2009). Writing in 2010, Anthony Julius claimed, in his history of antisemitism in England, that the Inversion had become ‘a reflex’ among certain groups in the UK (2010).

The Community Security Trust (CST), the UK Jewish community’s monitoring organisation, recorded that around one-third of the antisemitic incidents in July and August 2014 involved Holocaust- Image C. Labour Herald, June 25 (1982) According related language or imagery. Indeed, 239 of to his biographer Andy Hosken, Ken Livingstone, the 1,168 antisemitic incidents reported to CST who had a leading role at Labour Herald, insisted across 2014 ‘employed discourse based on the that the paper publish this cartoon. Nazi period, including swastikas and references to the Holocaust’ (2015a). ‘Reference to Hitler or the Holocaust’ noted the CST, was used to taunt methods of corpus linguistics – showed that or offend Jews, often in relation to events in Israel in the sub-sample analysed, the spectre and Gaza’ (cited in Gidley 2015). Offenders will of Nazism, with words such as “Hitler”, select from a range of Jewish related subjects,’ say “Holocaust”, “Nazi” and “Nazis”, was present CST, ‘particularly insults related to the Holocaust in the top 35 keywords for the downloaded or Israel, for language or imagery with which to sample. “Hitler” was mentioned 1117 times; abuse, insult or threaten their Jewish victims’ (CST “Holocaust” was mentioned in 505 tweets, 2015a, emphasis added). and “Nazi” or “Nazis” were mentioned in 851 tweets.’ The academic Ben Gidley analysed the mass demonstrations organised by the Palestine The Nazi theme was also evident in Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in London during hashtags analysed for the sub-sample, with Operation Protective Edge and concluded that the high frequency of the hashtags #hitler, while antisemitism was not a ‘predominant # hitlerwasright, and #genocide.’ (Iganski et presence’ at these events – indeed, ‘the al 2015). overwhelming majority of messages [...] were not antisemitic’ – antisemitism was ‘nonetheless Iganski and his colleagues found that 0.9 per cent a feature’ of street protests, where ‘a continuum of tweets in the corpus that mentioned Israel or of expressions emphasising the Holocaust’ was Gaza in July 2014 also invoked Hitler, Nazis or the found (2015). Holocaust – some 99, 832 out of 11,008,511 (2015b). Using the linguistic technique of collocation Holocaust Inversion placards were untypical analysis, they then examined a sub-sample of and always homemade in the summer of 2014, the twitter data set for the presence of invective Examples read: ‘Rabid evil mass murderers Hitlers and provisionally concluded that ‘The largest clone’, ‘Stop the Palestinian Holocaust now – category in relation to invective, again, was Nazi Fascist Israel will not escape justice’. One large references’ (APPG Report 2015:52). banner read ‘Genocide Apartheid Holocaust 2014’ and ‘Baby Killers’ alongside a Star of David. Discourse: antisemitism denial and victim There was at least one home-printed Holocaust reversal Inversion placard: ‘Bush and Blair are our Adolf Hitler’s and Gaza is our Auschwitz’. The All-Party Antisemitic anti-Zionism tends to see Holocaust Parliamentary Inquiry found that ‘banners and memory only as a politicised and manipulated placards equating Israel with Nazi Germany … thing, a club wielded instrumentally, with malice were said to have been paraded without police aforethought, by bullying Jews, for Jewish ends. interruption’ (2015:60). The words ‘Zionism’, Holocaust’, ‘Israel, ‘Nazi,’ ‘Jenin,’ ‘Gaza,’ ‘IDF,’ ‘SS,’ ‘Ghetto,’ ‘Concentration Social media was ‘a platform for antisemitic Camp’ – are now routinely rearticulated until rhetoric’ during the conflict, according to the their meaning is established not by its original Association of Chief Police Officers (APPG material referent but by its new place in the 2015:40). Paul Iganski and Abe Sweiry, two structure of antisemitic anti-Zionist discourse. academics from Lancaster University’s Corpus Approach to Social Sciences Unit, conducted an For example, ‘The Holocaust’ is transformed so analysis of antisemitic discourse on Twitter for that it no longer really comes into focus as a the APPG Inquiry. Working with 22 million Tweets descriptor of the Nazi murder of the six million. from July and August 2014, they analysed a sub- Instead, it is reconstituted as a moment within sample of 38,460 Tweets containing the words the new discourse; as a ‘lesson, unheeded, for ‘Israel’ or ‘Gaza’, along with the words ‘Jew’, ‘Jews’ the Jews’; as ‘what the Zionists are doing now or ‘Jewish’. Their findings suggest that Holocaust to the Palestinians’; as ‘a card played by Zionists Inversion discourse may be moving closer to the to prevent their incremental genocide of the centre of contemporary antisemitic discourse: Palestinians being criticised’. Israel’s operations to stop rockets from Gaza have been described A keyword analysis – one of the core as a ‘vernichtungskreig’ (war of extermination) and Israel itself as a ‘Taetervolk’ (a nation of so lacked antisemitic motivation or intent, criminals). Tariq Ali can say that Israelis treat he believed; only when Holocaust discourse Palestinians as ‘untermenschen’ while Noam ‘endorse[s] Nazi persecution of Jews and the Chomsky can write about the ‘jackboots’ of the Holocaust’ (e.g. when it involves brandishing a IDF. ‘Hitler Was Right!’ placard) can it be considered antisemitic (2015).

Annexe: OK, this discourse is offensive, but is it I find both of these arguments – from (the really antisemitic? presence of) banality and from (the absence of) individual subjectivity – unconvincing. More: they The meaning of this kind of discourse – in risk putting beyond understanding much that particular whether it should be considered is constitutive of contemporary antisemitism, as antisemitic or merely offensive – is disputed by opposed to earlier forms. I make that case now. anti-racists.

One recent locus of that dispute was the Why Holocaust Inversion is antisemitic contrasting submissions of two anti-racist academics, David Feldman and Ben Gidley, The argument from banality – i.e. everyone to the All Party Parliamentary Group on plays the Nazi card about everything, so it’s Antisemitism enquiry into antisemitism in the UK not antisemitic when used about Israel – is an during the Gaza conflict in the summer of 2014 innocent reading. It misses the three shaping (Feldman 2015; Gidley 2015). The final report of contexts which ensure that Inversion discourse the Inquiry, published in 2015, noted that ‘there ‘works’ in antisemitic ways and has real-world was some debate between those from whom antisemitic consequences: the Jewish context, we took expert testimony regarding the nuances the political context, and the discursive context. of the definition of antisemitism when it comes We need to bring each back in if we are tackle to Nazi comparison’ (APPG 2015). In short, Ben the crisis in the party. Gidley defined examples of Holocaust Inversion as antisemitic discourse but David Feldman did not, arguing that ‘the fact that they are wrong The Jewish context and hurtful does not render them antisemitic’ (2015). First, the language Feldman uses to describe the act of treating Israeli Jews as Nazis (‘grossly David Feldman advanced two reasons to deny misleading’, ’hurtful’) radically mischaracterises Holocaust Inversion the status of antisemitic its object. The Inversion is obscene; it verges on discourse. First, that the Inversion is banal (my the demonic in its cruelty, as it implicitly demands, word not his). i.e. he argued that invoking the as a matter of ethical obligation, no less – and Holocaust in argument is a ‘much used rhetorical this after the rupture in world history that was the device’, a common argumentative move used Shoah – the destruction of the Jewish homeland on about many subjects, often light-mindedly, the grounds that it is as a unique evil in the world, therefore lacking any specifically antisemitic on a par with the Nazi state that perpetrated the content. In support of this claim, Feldman cited Shoah. The discourse is, as Israeli Elhanan Yakira attacks on the UK Independence Party (UKIP) as puts it, implicitly ‘annihilationist’. Ben Gidley, in a ‘Nazis’ as an example of the banality of playing more English understated style, claims that ‘[t]o the Nazi card, also citing those occasions when single out Hitler and the Holocaust as the frame Israel’s own leaders call their enemies ‘Nazis’ for understanding the actions of the Jewish state (2015:7-8). is not neutral.’ (2015). Iganski, McGlashan and Sweiry, after studying antisemitism on Twitter Second, Feldman argued that the Inversion is during the conflict, pointed out that ‘deep not motivated by an anti-Jewish subjectivity, wounds are scratched when the Nazi-card is so cannot be antisemitic as such; the target of played in this way in discourse against Jews … the Inversion during OPE was Israel, not Jews, [it] is not simply abusive [but] … invokes painful collective memories for Jews and for many others. use of the ‘Nazi’ charge in other contexts, such By using those memories against Jews it inflicts as the criticism of UKIP, is to miss the political profound hurts’ and can incite violence against point quite spectacularly. It is to bracket the fact Jews (Igansky et al 2015). that the Inversion is embedded within ‘a world- wide anti-Israel campaign’. As Yakira observes , In similar vein, Dave Rich of the Community beyond the subjectivity of this or that individual Security Trust has argued that Holocaust user of the Inversion is an entire ‘eco-system’; an Inversion in the UK in 2014 deliberately played ‘international community’ with a shared code, on Jewish sensibilities ‘in order to provoke a language, jargon, credo and sensibility (2010). reaction’ adding that ‘another word for that is Jew-baiting’ (in Gidley 2015). The CST record incidents equating Israel with Nazi Germany as The discursive context antisemitic because the Inversion has a ‘visceral capacity to offend Jews on the basis of their Feldman’s approach also misses the discursive Jewishness’ and so ‘carries a particular meaning context, i.e. how the Inversion works within an for Jews because of the Holocaust’ (2015a). entire ‘discursive field’ or set of communications, to renew the core motif of antisemitism which is Elhanan Yakira rejects the argument from banality that that the Jews, conceived collectively, and for another reason: the ‘more immoral, more essentialised, are cast not just as the Other but significant … more effective … more widespread’ as malevolent (Gerstenfeld 2007:c). character of the Inversion ‘when applied to Jews and the Jewish state’. More: the Inversion seeks This perception of absolute malevolence – the to ‘suppress memory, which in this instance can ‘metaphysical dimension’ of antisemitism, to use only mean eliminating identity’ (2010). Gerstenfeld’s helpful term – is present in much antisemitic discourse, but the precise content of Robert Wistrich believed that the Inversion was that malevolence changes with the times and actually becoming more central to contemporary – as David Nirenberg has shown in exhaustive antisemitism; indeed was ‘in practice … the most detail in his seminal book Anti-Judaism: The potent form of contemporary antisemitism’ History of a Way of Thinking – also with the needs (2004). Invertors, he pointed out, ‘exploit the of the anti-Semites: the Jew as God-killer, the Jew’ reality that Nazism in the post-war world has as Rootless Cosmopolitan dissolving the integrity become the defining metaphor of absolute evil’ of every Nation, the Jew as the world-controlling and by associating Zionism with Nazism and Capitalist-Bolshevik conspirator subverting the Israel with the Third Reich, seek to place upon Gentile world for Jewish purposes, the Jew as all people nothing less than ‘a moral obligation Untermenschen, the Biological Pollutant of the to wage war against Israel’ as a uniquely malign Master-Race. Holocaust Inversion, far from being force (2004). banal, functions today – whatever the subjective intentions of the speaker – as a discursive updating for our times of both the core antisemitic motif The political context of malignity and the metaphysical dimension of antisemitism, by depicting the Jewish State as a The second context missed in the depiction of Nazi state, and its supporters as Zio-Nazis. the Nazi analogy as banal is the political context. In short, the Inversion is an essential part of the It is impossible to adequately grasp any of this political practice of a global social movement if we insist upon the presence of individual that seeks the destruction of only one state in the subjectivity, personal motivation and conscious world, the Jewish one. To equate this knowing, intention. Instead, we should understand the relentless, state-sponsored, well-funded and significance of any single piece of discourse global political project, that has stretched over as dependent upon (a) its place in the entire several decades and across several continents, discursive structure in which it is embedded and and has often merged with murderous upon (b) the social and political conjuncture antisemitism, with the semi-serious, rhetorical in which it is employed, which also shapes its meaning, emotional colouring and ‘affective socially for several decades now, by experienced dimension’ and (c) its real-world consequences political activists embedded within civil society (Gidley 2011, Hirsh 2007). organisations – including the Churches, universities, the trades unions, and the Labour Party – through the global BDS movement and its many associated forms and practices and platforms.

These activists seek to make Israel a pariah state and to exclude Israeli Jews and their supporters from the economic, cultural, educational and sporting life of humanity.

The movement has been boosted in the UK as parts of the far left and parts of the Islamist movement in the UK came together in the context of the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian The 2006 All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into peace process, the Second Intifada, the Durban Antisemitism had it exactly right: ‘discourse has conference, the 9/11 attacks, and widespread developed that is in effect antisemitic because it and fierce public protests against the ‘9/11 Wars’ views Zionism itself as a global force of unlimited in Afghanistan and Iraq. power and malevolence throughout history … having redefined Zionism in this way, traditional The traditions coalesced within the Stop the War antisemitic notions … are transferred from Jews … movement (in which the Socialist Workers Party, on to Zionism…’ (APPG 2006:17). Counterfire and the Communist Party provided the core leadership), George Galloway’s Respect This photograph of a blood-sucking vampiric coalition (an alliance between the Muslim Netanyahu, the puppeteer of the world powers, Brotherhood-linked Muslim Association of Britain taken on an anti-Israel demonstration in central and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party), and London on 26 July 2014 illustrates the point. the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, with its deep roots in UK trade unions (themselves more When the far-left writer Tariq Ali says that Israelis influenced by the anti-Zionist far-left that at any treat Palestinians as ‘Untermenschen’ (cited time in their history), churches and NGOs. in Julius 2010) he is constructing what Elhanan Yakira has helpfully labelled a ‘transhipment mechanism’, that is, a ‘vehicle for transferring Part 3: Expressions of antisemitic anti-Zionism in blame and negation’, i.e. for transferring the the Labour Party ‘absolute evil, limitless guilt, and suffering’ from the Holocaust to Israel and Zionism. 3.1 Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the membership

To minimise all of this as merely ‘offensive’ The recent crop of suspensions from the Labour and ‘hurtful’ is to fail to grasp the evolution of Party, almost without exception, have not been antisemitism in the era of Israel, and to fail to the result of old fashioned Jew hatred of a neo- delineate one of its contemporary forms. Nazi type amongst the membership. Rather, almost every suspension has involved party members who have fallen under the influence 2.3 The movement to exclude Israelis of the discourse and movement of modern antisemitic anti-Zionism, as this selection Ideologies are powerless until their notions are illustrates. effectively projected socially, i.e. taken out into the world by a social movement. The discourse • Beinazir Lasharie: Labour councillor in of antisemitic anti-Zionism has been projected Kensington and Chelsea suspended for sharing a video on Facebook claiming that suspended over allegations that she posted ISIS is run by the Israeli secret service, and a series of antisemitic tweets, including one in another post said that she had heard describing Adolf Hitler as ‘the greatest man ‘compelling evidence’ that Israel is behind in history’ and if it was not for him ‘these ISIS. ‘I’ve nothing against Jews … just sharing Jews would’ve wiped Palestine years ago’. it!’ she wrote. (This was one of the few cases of plain old • Naz Shah: Bradford West MP suspended antisemitism of the ‘Hitler was right’ kind, after it emerged she had shared a Facebook though even here we find a co-mingling with post in 2014 suggesting Israeli Jews should antisemitic anti-Zionism of the ’Israelis are be transported to the US as a ‘solution’ to Nazis’ kind.) the Israel/Palestine conflict, along with a • Khadim Hussain: former Lord Mayor of ‘problem solved’ comment. Bradford and Labour councillor suspended • Ken Livingstone: former Mayor of London by the party for sharing a Facebook post suspended for bringing the party into complaining schools only teach children distribute by claiming Adolf Hitler was a ‘about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists Zionist before he ‘went mad and ended up that were killed by Hitler’ instead of killings in killing six million Jews’. Livingstone made the Africa. comments while defending Shah’s comments. • Miqdad Al-Nuaimi: Newport councillor • Vicki Kirby: former Labour parliamentary suspended for sending a series of tweets candidate originally suspended form the comparing Israel to the Nazi party and Labour party in September 2014. Suspended suggesting there is an ‘Israeli connection’ to for a second time in March following an Islamic State. It was also reported that tweets outcry that she was allowed to return after suggested he thought Jews have the ‘same previously posting a series of tweets, including arrogant mentality as the Nazis’. one calling Hitler a ‘Zionist god’ and another • Terry Kelly: Renfrewshire councillor suspended about Jews having ‘big noses’. after it emerged he wrote a blog post in 2014 • Illyas Aziz: Labour councillor for Nottingham about the ‘Jewish lobby’ influencing the US was the first of three party members suspended politics and the Oscars, no less. over antisemitic social media posts on the • Tony Greenstein: suspended in light of same day. Aziz was found to have written a various comments. Refers to his critics as ‘Zio Facebook post in 2014 suggesting ‘perhaps idiots’ and ‘Zionist scum’. Argues that Zionism it would have been wiser to create Israel in collaborated with the Nazis. America...they could even relocate now’. He • Gerry Downing: expelled, re-admitted to, also posted an article about Nazi Germany, and now re-expelled. Tweeted an article that with a message: ‘A reminder of the treatment argued ‘Since the dawning of the period of and suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany. Are neo-liberal capitalism in the 1970s, elements there any similarities to how Israel is treating of the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie, from Milton Palestinians?’ Friedman to Henry Kissinger to the pro-Israel • Salim Mulla: former mayor of Blackburn was ideologues of the War on Terror, have played suspended hours later after sharing the same a vanguard role for the capitalist offensive Facebook post regarding relocating Israel against the workers.’ that got Shah suspended, as well as sharing • Bob Campbell: Momentum activist and party another post suggesting it is ‘bloody obvious’ member in Middlesbrough, suspended after Israel was behind some Islamic State (Isis) he told his followers on Facebook that ‘ISIS is attacks. run by Israel’, adding that IS has not attacked • Shah Hussain: a councillor from Burnley Israel ‘because the dog doesn’t bite its own was suspended the same day for allegedly tail’. tweeting at Israeli footballer Yossi Benayoun: ‘You are an [sic] complete and utter plonker, In short, Labour faces a problem of antisemitic you and your country doing the same thing anti-Zionism and not – or only very rarely – old- that Hitler did tour [sic] race in ww2.’ fashioned Jew hatred. • Aysegul Gurbuz: Labour councillor for Luton 3.2 Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the leadership on behalf of Assad.

However, it is unclear if the leader of the party The Leader’s full-throated defence of the vicious – always so clear about opposing old-fashioned antisemitic Islamist Raed Salah, discussed earlier Jew hatred of the kind fought at Cable Street in in the submission, is also profoundly concerning. the 1930s – has even an inkling of the existence and the danger of antisemitic anti-Zionism The party leader, and other leadership figures, in 2016. As the CST have pointed out ‘The must understand that antisemitism is not reducible problem is not that Corbyn is an antisemite or to one of the historical forms it has taken: Nazi/ a Holocaust denier – he is neither. The problem fascist and neo-fascist antisemitism. He needs, to is that he seems to gravitate towards people be blunt, to stop being so intellectually lazy and who are, if they come with an anti-Israel sticker come to terms with the evolution of antisemitism. on them.’ The concern about the party leader felt by many party members, and not just Jewish More: the repeated smear by some senior party members, is that he has a record of indulging the figures that the crisis that prompted this enquiry antisemitism of others when it comes wearing an was confected by ‘Zionists’ to ward off legitimate ‘Israel’ badge, which these days, it so often does. criticism of Israel, is itself part of the discourse of antisemitic anti-Zionism, being a form of This is not only a matter of one word (‘friends’ antisemitism denialism and victim-reversal. We – to describe his relationship to Hamas and have heard Len McCluskey (‘Labour’s Antisemitism Hezbollah). Nor is it only a matter of failing Row “Cynical Attempt” To Challenge Jeremy to mention another word (‘Israel’ – when he Corbyn’s Leadership, Len McCluskey Warns’), Ken addressed the 2015 Labour Friends of Israel Livingstone (‘Ken Livingstone blames “embittered reception). It is not only that he has failed to pay Blairite MPs” for antisemitism row’) and the Isaac Herzog – the leader of the Israeli Labour party leader (‘Jeremy Corbyn insists “Labour has Party and a fellow member of the Socialist no antisemitism problem” and suggests critics International – the basic courtesy of replying to “nervous” of his power as party suspends Ken his letter expressing concern about antisemitism Livingstone’) engage in antisemitism denialism in the UK party and inviting him to Israel – months and victim-reversal. after it was sent. It is also that, at times, the leader has been an enabler or even a purveyor of antisemitic anti-Zionism and he seems to have Part 4: Recommendations no self-awareness of that fact. We need to walk the walk not simply talk For example, the leader’s support for the the talk. There should be no hierarchy when antisemitic organisation Hezbollah flies in it comes to racism. Racism is racism. And the face of Labour’s best traditions. He has if it means members of my party – senior defended Hezbollah is ‘an organisation that members including members of the NEC is bringing about long term peace and social – being trained on what antisemitism is justice and political justice in the whole region’ then so be it. Sadiq Khan, Labour Mayor of – a truly appalling statement. Hezbollah are London, 2016. an antisemitic Islamist goose-stepping ‘Party of God’ who persecute (and assassinate) liberals The party needs to urgently construct an and democrats in Lebanon. The Hezbollah intellectual and cultural firewall to seperate leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said, ‘If Jews criticism of Israeli policy – which is legitimate, all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of and which, even when unfair, remains non- going after them worldwide.’ (NY Times, May lethal – from the demonization of Israel which is 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Hezbollah not legitimate and which, given what we know were enthusiastically slaughtering Syrian civilians about how discourse can precede violence, may on behalf of the Assad regime long before ISIS well be lethal. or Jabhat Al-Nusra joined the fray, and more recently they have been starving Syrians to death No one is suggesting the party take an ‘Israel right or wrong’ approach. No one is saying Israel is • Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or beyond criticism. Legitimate criticism, even when harming of Jews in the name of a radical unfair, includes opposition to the occupation ideology or an extremist view of religion. and the settlement project, opposition to Israel’s • Making mendacious, dehumanising, periodic restoration deterrence against Hamas demonising, or stereotypical allegations rockets by the use of ‘disproportionate’ force, and about Jews as such or the power of Jews opposition to inegalitarian, illiberal and racist as collective — such as, especially but not forces within Israel. exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, No one is suggesting the party give up on our economy, government or other societal duty as democrats to support a Palestinian state, institutions. achieved through negotiations, as an expression • Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible of the right to national self-determination of the for real or imagined wrongdoing committed Palestinian people. The author of this submission is by a single Jewish person or group, or even the editor of Fathom: for a deeper understanding for acts committed by non-Jews. of Israel and the region, a journal in which critical • Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas perspectives on Israeli society and politics are a chambers) or intentionality of the genocide constant presence, as they should be, showcasing of the Jewish people at the hands of National the critical voices of Palestinian politicians and Socialist Germany and its supporters and activists, Israel’s Arab citizens, Israeli feminists, accomplices during World War II (the reform Jews, and left-wing Israelis. Holocaust). • Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as This submission ends with two recommendations a state, of inventing or exaggerating the that could help the party deal with its antisemitic Holocaust. anti-Zionism problem over the long-term: the • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal adoption of a version of the ‘EUMC Working to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews Definition’ of antisemitism, and, taking up Sadiq worldwide, than to the interests of their own Khan’s suggestion, a national programme to nations. educate the membership in its spirit. Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel 4.1 Adopt the EUMC Working Definition taking into account the overall context could include: The party should adopt a version of The EUMC Working Definition (European Union • Denying the Jewish people their right to Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, self-determination (e.g. by claiming that now the Agency For Fundamental Rights, FRA). the existence of a State of Israel is a racist It is used around the world, from the European endeavour). Parliament, to the UK College of Policing, to the • Applying double standards by requiring of it US Department of State and the International a behaviour not expected or demanded of Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (See Hirsh 2013 any other democratic nation. on the history of the EUMC Working Definition). • Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews The Definition is so important for the party because killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise it states that particular kinds of hostility to Israel Israel or Israelis. ‘could, taking into account the overall context’ – • Drawing comparisons of contemporary that qualifier providing the flexibility needed to Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. take context into account – be a manifestation of • Holding Jews collectively responsible for antisemitism. The kinds of hostility the Definition actions of the state of Israel. has in mind are highlighted in bold below, as part of a longer list of examples of antisemitism The EUMC Definition also makes it clear that, on included within the EUMC Working Definition: the other hand, ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be the right to national self-determination of just regarded as antisemitic.’ one people, the Jewish people; about the active promotion of the destruction of just one state Some people oppose the EUMC Definition for in the world, the little Jewish one; and about one of two reasons: proposals to boycott just one state in the world, Israel. (a) they falsely believe, or claim to believe, that the Definition defines all criticism of Israel as The possibility of asking the highly respected antisemitic. In fact, the Definition is explicit in Community Security Trust to advise about this rejecting that very notion. education programme should be explored. They are the experts who deal with antisemitism (b) they refuse to accept that any criticism of everyday and who produce a detailed report Israel can be antisemitic. For them, any way of each year into antisemitic discourse as well talking about Israel, even the Nazi analogy, any as antisemitic incidents. The Jewish Labour policy towards Israel, from boycott to abolition, is Movement, a party affiliate, should also be never antisemitic. For these dogmatists, the two consulted. circles just never meet.

If the party adopts either of these positions it 4.3 Create a new party campaign: ‘Pro’: pro- will be a disaster, and its crisis will likely become Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-peace chronic. Antisemitic anti-Zionism will flourish, the fundamental perception of the party among Labour must offer members a better, more the electorate will be that Labour is ‘extremist’, democratic alternative: campaigning in solidarity there may well be an exodus of long-standing with all who support the two states for two peoples members and donors; and the climate for Jews solution: pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-peace. The in this country will become less welcoming and creation of a new campaign and a new or ‘third more dangerous. narrative’ could help provide party members with a progressive campaigning alternative.

4.2: Develop a political education programme 4.4 A final word While suspensions are necessary to establish red lines, the radical answer to the crisis in the party Whatever the subjective motivations of the is a long-term, well-resourced political education individuals who indulge it, antisemitic anti- programme. Zionism – as a programme to abolish Israel, a movement to boycott Israel and discourse to The party can recover from this crisis. Labour still demonise Israel – is proving to be, in its real- officially supports a policy of mutual recognition, world effects, an incitement to discrimination and engagement, negotiation and compromise even physical violence against Jews. It begins to secure two states for two peoples: a viable by refusing to accept that ‘history has forged a Palestine and a secure Israel. It has long-standing Hebrew speaking Jewish nation on the Eastern links to both the Histadrut and the Palestinian shores of the Mediterranean’ (Hirsh 2007). It carries General Federation of Trades Unions (PGFTU); it on by adopting the reactionary programme of can talk to the Israeli Labour Party and to Fatah; ending the very existence of Israel. It goes on, it has an active Friends of Israel group and an over the years, justifying this programme by a active Friends of Palestine group. Now it needs to means of a rigid dogma, a code that reduces educate its new membership in the democratic an entire people to ‘Zios’ and equates Israel with spirit of those policies and links, and in the spirit the Nazis. And it ends in the grotesque chaos of of the EUMC Working Definition. the party having to suspend its own members, its own councillors, its own Mayors and MPs and to The party leadership must educate itself and the launch an enquiry into antisemitism in its ranks. membership about what is wrong with refusing Enough is enough. 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